Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [50]
‘Then I will have the police up, I warn you. There must be some law and order even in this God-forsaken island.’
‘No police here,’ she said. ‘No chain gang, no tread machine, no dark jail either. This is free country and I am free woman.’
‘Christophine,’ I said, ‘you lived in Jamaica for years, and you know Mr Fraser, the Spanish Town magistrate, well. I wrote to him about you. Would you like to hear what he answered?’ She stared at me. I read the end of Fraser’s letter aloud: ‘I have written very discreetly to Hill, the white inspector of police in your town. If she lives near you and gets up to any of her nonsense let him know at once. He’ll send a couple of policemen up to your place and she won’t get off lightly this time…. You gave your mistress the poison that she put into my wine?’
‘I tell you already – you talk foolishness.’
‘We’ll see about that – I kept some of that wine.’
‘I tell her so,’ she said. ‘Always it don’t work for béké. Always it bring trouble … So you send me away and you keep all her money. And what you do with her?’
‘I don’t see why I should tell you my plans. I mean to go back to Jamaica to consult the Spanish Town doctors and her brother. I’ll follow their advice. That is all I mean to do. She is not well.’
‘Her brother!’ She spat on the floor. ‘Richard Mason is no brother to her. You think you fool me? You want her money but you don’t want her. It is in your mind to pretend she is mad. I know it. The doctors say what you tell them to say. That man Richard he say what you want him to say – glad and willing too, I know. She will be like her mother. You do that for money? But you wicked like Satan self!’
I said loudly and wildly, ‘And you think that I wanted all this? I would give my life to undo it. I would give my eyes never to have seen this abominable place.’
She laughed. ‘And that’s the first damn word of truth you speak. You choose what you give, eh? Then you choose. You meddle in something and perhaps you don’t know what it is.’ She began to mutter to herself. Not in patois. I knew the sound of patois now.
She’s as mad as the other, I thought, and turned to the window.
The servants were standing in a group under the clove tree. Baptiste, the boy who helped with the horses and the little girl Hilda.
Christophine was right. They didn’t intend to get mixed up in this business.
When I looked at her there was a mask on her face and her eyes were undaunted. She was a fighter, I had to admit. Against my will I repeated, ‘Do you wish to say good-bye to Antoinette?’
‘I give her something to sleep – nothing to hurt her. I don’t wake her up to no misery. I leave that for you.’
‘You can write to her,’ I said stiffly.
‘Red and write I don’t know. Other things I know.’
She walked away without looking back.
All wish to sleep left me. I walked up and down the room and felt the blood tingle in my finger-tips. It ran up my arms and reached my heart, which began to beat very fast. I spoke aloud as I walked. I spoke the letter I meant to write.
‘I know now that you planned this because you wanted to be rid of me. You had no love at all for me. Nor had my brother. Your plan succeeded because I was young, conceited, foolish, trusting. Above all because I was young. You were able to do this to me …’
But I am not young now, I thought, stopped pacing and drank. Indeed this rum is mild as mother’s milk or father’s blessing.
I could imagine his expression if I sent that letter and he read it.
‘Dear Father,’ I wrote. ‘We are leaving this island for Jamaica very shortly. Unforeseen circumstances, at least unforeseen by me, have forced me to make this decision. I am certain that you know or can guess what has happened, and I am certain you will believe that the less you talk to anyone about my affairs, especially my marriage, the better. This is in your interest as well as mine. You will hear from me again. Soon I hope.’
Then I wrote to the firm of lawyers I had dealt with in Spanish Town. I told them that I wished to rent a furnished house